This game feels very impish

[The Black Sword]

Dreylin's Stonehenge city popped to 4th ring borders, much earlier than I expected. I don't have visibility on the city, maybe he got another culture source in there. That means I've pretty much lost control of my silver for good. (Or at least until I take that city.) It's pretty bad news, I really need that happy source right now. I ouput a lot of hammers and food at the moment but I can't really use it efficiently. I can't grow mature cities and I don't really want to build anything else pre-Currency. There was an element of truth to that council meeting.

I sent Dreylin a gems for silver trade. My hope is that he'll hook the extra silver himself and I can buy it off him when I hit Currency. 

I'm resorting to working some coast to get there earlier:


I think I'll be able to scrape enough together to make a T86 Currency, but it will be very tight.  That's a big headstart that mack has to the tech, I'm super worried about him.

The Hanging Gardens basically gave me half a granary in my new cities btw, allowing them to get off to some explosive starts. Aluneth is the quickest:


It can grow straight to 6 now with a chopped WB and another chop into the lighthouse. You can see Pindicator didn't settle for deer first ring also, so I'm very happy with my city location.

I spent some time thinking about attacking Dreylin and superdeath too. I have a bunch of hammers I could put into an army if I wanted. The Dreylin front is tied together by his Stonehenge city though. Hard to see how I break through 60% defense on a hill without catapults. And it's hard to make his other cities productive with that culture pressed against them. We might manage more luck vs superdeath but I'm still not sure about that from a geo-politices perspective.

Post HG demos:


I settled an Academy as planned with my GS btw. My breakeven should start increasing post Currency. I did seriously consider bulbing Alphabet, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The tech is not that useful once I have Currency and I think it would only get me there an extra turn or so earlier.

[The Black Sword]

It looks like Currency will come on time. Naufrager was the 2nd person to hit it recently and the extra pre-req gives me a bit of a cushion. After that a 5ish turn Calendar is pretty much locked in so my cities have somewhere good to put their food. And then I think I'll want Metal Casing and Construction to have somewhere good to put my hammers. Which one goes first depends on the neighbour situation but I'm leaning Construction at the moment. 

Mackoti already has both Currency and Calendar and is looking very dominant right now. I'm hurting for happy while his Academy Cap is at size 11. I feel like the number 2 at the minute so it might be that I'm the one who has to take direct action against him later. It's not a realistic option for quite some time though and there are still plenty of options left to us to improve our own civ. 

Rusten and superdeath are at war, and I'm a bit nervous about superdeath collapsing. I think Rusten is the 2nd civ with HBR beside mack. He hasn't settled many cities since his brief war with mack which suggests unit building instead. Superdeath threw a golden age though(which ordinarily I might call premature, but he might have needed it here), his power is spiking and he hasn't lost a city yet. Not having Rusten's graphs makes me nervous, I'm not in a good position to react if superdeath falls in the next 10t. 

Dreylin is similarly weak like superdeath and if it were not for that Stonehenge city he'd be a very tempting target. I feel both of them are potentially conquerable with cats, war elephants and twice as many hammers. Pindicator and Commodore are a tier above those 2 and I think I'd need knights to think about a cost-efficient war. The Comm border in particular is super-defensible, he didn't try to push up on the marble, so of the two Pin looks more tempting. Comm might be more of a vulture target if he gets embroiled with Gav or Plako. A secondary point with regarding waiting for knights with Pin, is that it gives him plenty of time to clear the jungle from my new cities.

My big long term tech goal can be boiled down to either Astro or Knights, and I haven't figured out what's better yet. A short list of options ruled out:

Music - I can generate artists on my own if I want. It's too early to commit to Sistine and a culture victory.
Aes-> Lit - Not worth it just for the National Epic(again, I'm Phi). If I unlock the Heroic Epic or Rusten is slacking on TGL when I'm finishing construction I'll reconsider.
Engineering - Not before Knights.
Philosophy - Is a bulb worth a religion? Leaning toward no. After you have a certain amount of happy points unlocked, there's diminishing returns on the rest. I doubt I can generate a clean enough prophet pool for a shrine.
Theocracy - I have no modifiers on wonders, temples or monasteries. In this scenario I think the Apostolic Palace is mainly useful as a decent hammer sink if you don't have other options. But I think Galleons and settlers will be a better hammer sink.
Nationalism - Taj - we need a bigger empire to make the golden age worth it.
Liberalism - we'd probably want to Lib Astro but it's much quicker to just double bulb it.

We'll probably be throwing a golden age around T110 and should pick up Code of Laws before hand. Partly to generate GP during the golden age, but with nerfed whipping in RtR it's possibly worth it to give up Slavery altogether at this stage and go for 1/3 workshops.

Option A - use the GA to research to Machinery/Optics, generate a merchant for a trade mission and double bulb Astro. Alternately, delay the astro bulb/golden age so that we can Merchant bulb Civil Service and work in the Bureau revolt with the GA. Unfortunately if we research CS we block the Astro bulb, which is what makes the timing awkward.

Option B - Use the GA to get to Feudalism, generating at least 1 Merchant and revolt to HR/Vassalage. Use the Trade Mission(s) to quickly hit Knights. Alternately, delay the knights/golden age so that we bulb Banking at the end of the GA and revolt to Mercantilism too.

[The Black Sword]

2nd city with a 'Liberate' sign in the city screen that Pin has settled this game.   I was just about to whip a galley to send over there. I guess I should have chopped it out to go a bit quicker, but I didn't think I'd be so established on this coast. I don't think it's worth any hostilities over anyway.

I now have a spare settler with nothing to do. Dreylin still has not hooked any coastal resources, so I think there's a free island up north somewhere. But it's a long way north, it'd be really isolated and he'd probably settle the thing before I got there. I'll just hold the settler to use for potential combat/emergencies.

Calendar comes in T101. I offered 5gpt for silver to Dreylin, he returned with an offer of 10. The happy does not seem so urgent anymore. I have settled enough filler cities to work my good tiles despite the happy problems. And after slow building the latest batch of settlers my whip unhappy has worn off. I'm actually improvement limited right now. I have a half built settler in my cap that should have been another worker. I needed to build a food hammer unit and didn't think a worker would be worth the 60h. But as I'm currently pausing half my workforce to double chop granaries in my last 3 to-be-settled cities, we're a bit short. Never underestimate a worker. I guess we'll finish the settler around Astro time.

Mostly just trying to maximise growth for the potential golden age right now. A couple of Libs going up in the commerce or great people cities, hammer cities are on ikhanda and some units.

I have 2 cities with big tracts of 6-7 forests left and I'm debating holding them for a wonder. If I could figure out Rusten's progress towards Lit and TGL I could consider chopping it out in 1t. A quick Taj Mahal later might be important. I'm leaning towards holding the forests right now. Even if they don't go on a wonder I can chop them into an army when I get a key tech. Hammers won't snowball much at the moment. It will mean working a bunch of forested hills instead of mines at one location though. The other location is not a big deal to miss out on the tiles to work.

[The Black Sword]

Superdeath's econ, both hammers and GNP, has collapsed after his golden age ended. He's being prickly, so he'll live 10t, but there's no way he lives 30 IMO. Someone has picked up Construction also. I need to figure out the best way to take my share. I think we'll try wealth build to Construction over the next few turns then go hard for Catapults and War elephants(did these always require HBR?). Maybe Barracks cities can continue to build axes, they'll probably be useful.

We missed a turn 100 update so have some overview pics:







Southern Empire:


Ichabod's Togwaggle Druid was settled. This is gaining some traction in standard after the nerfs now too. Dude Paladin will be a cottage centre, Genn Pally and Taunt Warrior will be fishing villages and everything else will be little size 8ish hammer cities. Dead Man's hand will save it's forests for a potential future Taj Mahal. My golden age plan has been delayed somewhat, the upside is that I'll have the Moai completed in time now(thanks to the mined sheep).

Northern Empire:


Razakas will be a Bureau-cap extraordinaire, Shudderwock is the Heroic Epic city, Cubelock is the National Epic city. Mind Blast is a secondary GP farm since I'm Phi and Even Shaman will be another mini hammer pump. Inner Fire has been pumping my first 3 GS so far this game, not sure what it will end up doing, leaning towards cottages. I was saving the forests in Cubelock for another potential wonder run but I'm not seeing any targets in the future. One turning TGL was an option but now with the superdeath situation I doubt I can afford the attempt(and I'm still afraid Rusten will finish it at any time). So I might save 2-3 forests for the NE and chop the others into Elephants.

Eastern Empire:


I had some thinking about Aluneth this turn. I'm leaning towards delaying my golden age, going for the 2GS and 1 GM to bulb both Astro and CS, so I can get into Bureau on the last GA turn. I feel it might be a while before my next GA and it's worth the slight Astro delay to get into a good civic. The next good civic is at Banking, but that is a 5k beaker delay in Astro, a much bigger sacrifice. Anyway, this means I really need a clean merchant pool and I decided to get one in Aluneth. In general I'm back to 1 pop whipping these days(if at all). My food surplus is low enough, happy cap about to be high enough and with a GA coming up, I don't think 2-whipping makes sense. ALuneth is just nuts though, I'm going to 2 whip the Impi into 3-4 whip a market to run merchants and I'm still worried about pushing past my happy cap.

Regarding city specialisation, Aluneth is a third Great Person farm, Baku rogue will be a cottage city while Spell Hunter and Spiteful need to go hard hammers so I can get a decent navy on this coast.

I feel my demographics are pretty misleading btw. My food demographic is mostly population, not food surplus and mack is killing it in hammers and GNP(in particular). Not much to do about it anyway.

[Ichabod]

Have you tried playing any Hearthstone tournaments, TBS? I bet you'd do very well.

Did you play HS when Patron Warrior was popular? Before the final Warsong Commander nerf, I mean.

[The Black Sword]

HS tournaments are another thing on my to-do list when my thesis finally gets done. They look pretty fun.

I was just starting during patron times. I was generally above rank 5, patron wasn't too popular at that level and they didn't even do very well when I queued into them. I wasn't watching any twitch at the time either, so I never really got to see the deck at full strength. I remember the first match I ever watched was the Ostkaka vs Thijs semi-final, which was amazing, and it was only after that I really began paying attention to meta reports and the like.

[ipecac]

2nd city with a 'Liberate' sign in the city screen that Pin has settled this game. 

What does this mean? Undefended new city?

[The Black Sword]

I'm not sure what the exact criteria are, but when you settle close to someone else and far from your own culture, this sign can appear. It disappears after a while, perhaps related to you getting culture in the city. The first time Pin claimed the jungle really early, he's got a city just 6 tiles from my capital. I wasn't really expecting to get the sign when he settled the island but it is pretty isolated.

[BRickAstley]

I've never watched top level competitive Hearthstone. What's a VOD or 2 of a great tournament match I could watch?

[The Black Sword]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDNFGRqV6rQ

That's the Thijs vs Ostkaka semi-final in the world championship I mentioned. Not sure how it holds up to time but I think it's generally regarded as one of the top matches. I remember them making a number of plays I didn't expect, the freeze mage mirror in particular was good.